First things first, lets get somethings cleared. I am writing this reviewing my purchase and not the game. After all that's why you are here, right? To know whether its okay to spend some money on a decade and a half old game and not have buyer's remorse. If you wanted a review of how the game is.. or felt to the gamers.. you'd be on Gamespot or IGN.

So anyway, that out of the question, ignore the 8 hrs. I have probably played the game for more than 15 hours on steam and 800 hours in the past 13 years. These are the 8 hours when my steam was online. Now onward to the game -

CONS:

1. Many graphics options are broken. Especially anti-aliasing . It causes the bright white flashes on the screen which many reviewers are mentioning here. Had to turn it off and set texture filtering to bilinear . (This is not a modern systems problem, I remember having this problem on my Vista , 7 , 8.1 and now 10)
2. On many modern systems, the game just won’t launch. Again , compatibility mode and tweaking necessary.
3. The camera stutters occasionaly, isn't as smooth as I remember it to be.
4. High framerate is an absolute NO-NO. Anything above 60 fps with break your game and at one point in the game you have to set it to 30 fps or you'll get stuck. ( Won't spoil it here )
5. No Mods. Yeah, you heard that right, the community is dead. No bugfixes or graphical enhancements. Pure vanilla is your only option.
6. The game, along with thousands during that era, is made for joystick/gamepad. If you play K+M, you WILL get frustrated at spots where camera switches to landmark mode and you can only use keyboard to 'aim' your prince.
7. MOST IMPORTANT - STEAM OVERLAY DOESN'T WORK IN THIS GAME.

PROS:

1. Graphics although old, are not ugly and unpleasant to look at. At points the game still looks beautiful and screenshot worthy (with PrtScr ofcourse, since you know.. overlay won't work)
2. Story and narration are also good. If you don't compare it to modern games which were inspired by and built upon these old games, the game never gets 'boring or dull'. Voice acting is also good enough. Dark prince is <3
3. No DRM. No u-play(thank god). The game launches and plays fine without steam open for me.

So final verdict? if you have never played it, buy it on 66% off (maximum it goes) and call it a day. If you are a veteran like me and wanted to have a modern experience/ support the devs, don't buy it. I thought I would support the devs but I realized they have long gone. No updates to the game, no bugfixes. Ubisoft has put it on the market because they can rip off vets like us. The experience is actually worse than it was a decade ago and actually kinda ruined the nostalgia for me.

No controller support for a game originally designed around controllers.

At first I thought i was too harsh about this game over all those years. But after playing it for couple of hours I remembered why it deserved the hate.

They took a turn and blended the brutality of the 2nd prince and the eastern fairy tale of the 1st one.
Now Kayleena is the teller of the story (in the same smooth style as it was in PoP SoT), the dagger is our main weapon (and we still can utilize many enemy weapons, so the battle system is still there).

What was added:

Positives:
- well, the puzzles are still here
- new types of ledges and traps
- the chariot rides feels awesome

Meh:
- stealth. I guess it is ok-ish, but the fights were one of the best part in the 2nd PoP, why would you switch the accent from the best action part of the game to this?
- bosses. They are kinda mediocre with a little bit of originality, or else have a gimmick/twist
- Many traps feel out of place. (like in SoT traps were the part of a defensive mechanism that you activate yourself - part of the story, in WW - they were defensive mechanisms to stop Prince from reaching the Empress of time - part of the story, but in TTT they are just a game mechanic, without explanations.
- the story itself is kinda interesting, the maturing of prince as a person, the leader of its people, his emotional intelligence and selfreflection is great, but the story itself has a lot of plotholes

Negatives:

- CRITICAL BUGS, that just dont let you to end the game (jumping pad/ springboard bug as just one of issues) - fixed by a mod, but still very upsetting
- stability. Unlike SoT and WW this game has a lot of issues. From freezes without possibility to escape (except closing the program from task manager) or the game closes randomly by itself
- worse graphics compare to the WW (the size itself is 2x smaller, maybe because the game was butchered OR modified to be console-friendly and it was the last years of PS2)
- less brutality (no dismembering, no fancy finishers - fixed by a mod)
- less weapons (WW had a lot of them with different stats and effects)
- Sand credits. No, seriously WTF
- fighting system received some cuts
- the M&K controls are just gamepad emulation
- the dark prince "boss fight" sucks, A LOT

All in all, to complete the "sands of time" story you kinda need to finish this game. But as an independent game, especially this particular steam version - I cant recommend it.
The game is a butchered console port that lost too many things that it even had (and it even hadnt that much). The graphics the infamous 2d textures of the babylon tower and the city itself, 2d fire, no dismembering/gore (probably with new textures, with camera fixes, with bug fixes) - it is playable and even enjoyable but not "out of the box" and not as it is without previous games.

This particular port of The Two Throne is not the best out there. It is playable, but is also chalk-full of visual and graphical bugs. I say this knowing that a game made in 2005 is obviously not going to run well on any modern windows system, but having played the original Playstation version, the difference is quite the functional and immersive experience that does not get hindered when some asset decides that it does not feel like performing well. I hate to see that being done to this game, particularly when I find myself desiring to go through it again because I wish to experience the story once more and wander through the (now desolate) fictional streets of Babylon. It's a shame that this port will never receive any stability updates. Only way I can launch it with some sort of stability is via a windows 7 virtual machine.

there's a glitch where you cannot hang off a ledge without letting go

need i tell you how huge of a problem this is?

Great game. I remember playing it on the PS2 back when it was newly released. I thought I would play it again on PC but it's unplayable. Every few seconds a white light (I'm assuming its the sky light) covers the whole screen and doesn't go away unless I face the camera away from any visible sky. All settings are at max. Tried all the compatibility modes and didn't make any difference.

Port is pretty poorly done. Been trying to get my controller to work for 4 hours and seems impossible. Unplayable on MnK.

Just leaving a negative review here for otherwise awesome game, because how Ubisoft treats players who support developers with their money. ♥♥♥♥ YOU!

cant recommend to anyone ! both PoP : Warrior Within and The two Thrones here on Steam , suffer from alot of gamebreaking bugs , that never ever have been fixed. (chances are high you will never finish the game)
( And So u know Im a Big Fan of these Games , this is just unacceptable)
My Bugreport for this game : right in the first tempel , where the prince needs to stab his dagger in der wall after a wallrun upwards, to continue : hes not doing such thing ! , even if the input command is right , hes not doing it. so you are stuck.

Conclusion :
Stop giving UBISOFT money for these unpolished games ! even on discount this will not be worth it. You'll regret it.

What a Shame !

after playing for a while, the mouse and keyboard didnt worked somehow, please fix this bug, i need to restart the game every single time this happen